Detection of Cyberattacks through Dynamic Watermarking

Abstract: Dynamic watermarking is an active intrusion detection technique that can potentially detect replay attacks, spoofing attacks, and deception attacks in the feedback channel for control systems. In this talk, we will discuss our recent work on a novel dynamic watermarking algorithm for finite-state finite-action Markov decision processes and present bounds on the mean time between false alarms, and the mean delay between the time an attack occurs and when it is detected. We further compute the sensitivity of the performance of the control system as a function of the watermark. We will then present a model free attack detection algorithm. The effectiveness of the algorithms designed are demonstrate through two numerical examples.

Bio: Abhishek Gupta is an assistant professor at Electrical and Computer Engineering at The Ohio State University. He completed his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering (2014), MS in Applied Mathematics (2012), and MS in Aerospace Engineering (2011), all from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He completed his undergraduate in Aerospace Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India (2005-09). His research develops new theory and algorithms for stochastic control problems, games, and optimization problems, with applications to secure cyberphysical systems and develop market mechanisms for deep renewable integration. He is a recipient of Kenneth Lee Herrick Memorial Award at UIUC and Lumley Research Award at OSU.